The Chinese startup DeepSeek shook up the world of AI last week after showing its supercheap R1 model could compete directly with OpenAI’s o1. While it wiped nearly $600 billion off Nvidia’s market value, Microsoft engineers were quietly working at pace to embrace the partially open- source R1 model and get it ready for Azure customers. It was a decision that came from the very top of Microsoft.
Sources familiar with Microsoft’s DeepSeek R1 deployment tell me that the company’s senior…
